Readers must be given room to bring their own emotions to a piece so crammed with emotional content; the writer must tenaciously resist explaining why the material is so moving.

One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.

When you're ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit.

Scholarship hath no fury like that of a language purist faced with sludge.

The game is won or lost on hundreds of small details.

People and places are the twin pillars on which most nonfiction is built. Every human event happens somewhere, and the reader wants to know what that somewhere was like.

Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.